As far as I can tell, this is a definitional dispute. There are many traits that females express in modern society. I take essentialist theory to be saying that all of these traits are based in sex, not in gender.
As you say, this is wrong—lots of these traits are gender and would disappear if feminist social engineering succeeded. Only those traits actually based on sex would remain
I was criticizing the position you expressed that men have literally nothing to say about the dividing line between female gender and female sex. For example, a man can say “Getting pregnant is an expression of sex, not gender” or “Wearing dresses is an expression of gender, not sex.”
Men have literally nothing to say about the experiences of women under patriarchy, which is the basis of feminism.
Let’s ignore for the moment whether all feminists do or should believe this.
Is you position that men have nothing useful to say about how to end patriarchy? Because that looks a lot like the stereotypical patriarchal assertion that women have nothing useful to say about how society should work. It seems to me that the counter-argument to that position should work just as well to justify male participation in the intellectual process that hopefully leads to the reshaping of society to make it more gender equal.
As far as I can tell, this is a definitional dispute. There are many traits that females express in modern society. I take essentialist theory to be saying that all of these traits are based in sex, not in gender.
As you say, this is wrong—lots of these traits are gender and would disappear if feminist social engineering succeeded. Only those traits actually based on sex would remain
I was criticizing the position you expressed that men have literally nothing to say about the dividing line between female gender and female sex. For example, a man can say “Getting pregnant is an expression of sex, not gender” or “Wearing dresses is an expression of gender, not sex.”
You seem to have targeted a problem that I don’t care about, so we’ve miscommunicated at some point.
Men have literally nothing to say about the experiences of women under patriarchy, which is the basis of feminism.
Let’s ignore for the moment whether all feminists do or should believe this.
Is you position that men have nothing useful to say about how to end patriarchy? Because that looks a lot like the stereotypical patriarchal assertion that women have nothing useful to say about how society should work. It seems to me that the counter-argument to that position should work just as well to justify male participation in the intellectual process that hopefully leads to the reshaping of society to make it more gender equal.